Personal submarines, prostitutes and simulated warfare: Inside the insanely luxurious world of billionaires' superyachts

Yahoo

a day ago

They've got safe houses in New Zealand and private planes full of jet fuel, but cruise-ship-sized yachts are how the planet's richest people plan to escape a world gone to hell. That's why, for the yacht industry, bad times are often boom times.
'I expect 2025 to be a good year,' Anders Kurtén, the CEO of the brokerage Fraser Yachts Monaco office, told The Post.
The pandemic led to a rise in yacht sales, and he sees the 'same type of psychological mechanisms at work' right now.
'It's the ultimate personal freedom,' he said.
The growth in yacht sales has happened despite sanctions against Russian buyers, who had previously made up 25% of the top end of the market.
'That's really been backfilled by the Americans, who seem to have this new, hungry appetite for very large yachts,' said Jonathan Beckett, CEO of yacht brokerage Burgess, which has 17 offices across the globe, from New York to Hong Kong. 'I never thought I'd see Americans buying and building boats of this size . But they are.'
The largest super-, mega- and giga- yachts can be more than 500 feet and cost half a billion. Jeff Bezos' $500 million Kuro stretches to 417 feet and it doesn't even crack the world's top 10 largest.
The US's 902 billionaires are still finding fresh ways to enhance these floating mansions. Yachts like the 255-foot ENERGY— which Fraser is listing for €199 million, or roughly $230 million — have Steinway baby grand pianos in the music lounges, beauty salons and beach clubs as standard kit..
'You'll have a full spa team with a beauty technician and a big boat will have a Botox specialist on board,' said Philippa Smith, the founder and managing director of Silver Swan Recruitment, which staffs the yachts, homes and chalets of the global 1% from their offices in London, Miami and Dubai.
She said that the level of service available on today's yachts now greatly exceeds that of even the most luxurious mansions — because where a dozen or so domestic staffers can run a big house, a large yacht may have a crew of 100. At sea, where there's no one to judge, you can simply get away with more.
'I spoke to someone recently who was hiring a naturopath, which is someone that is on board all the time, offering natural treatments, detox plans and daily wellness. You wouldn't have that at home,' she said. 'Obviously you will have a chef, but you might have a specialty Japanese sushi chef for a particular voyage. You'll have a sommelier, a full water sports team, a DJ, a florist, a drone specialist, full security and for children a plethora of nannies, governesses and specialist educators like a marine biologist.'
She recalled an incident where a client's 7-year-old didn't enjoy the yogurt on board. At the snap of a finger, the yacht's chief stewardess had the preferred yogurt sent from Russia by private plane, which met the yacht's helicopter in Corsica — and the choosy child's breakfast was saved.
'Even though these guests are very wealthy and very intelligent, they are dumb in some senses, because they'll be in the middle of the ocean and be requesting the most ridiculous things, bearing in mind you can't just go to a shop,' she said. 'The helicopters are used because they want a particular Champagne tonight.'
A yacht is the ultimate catbird seat from which to watch the world burn, argues Evan Osnos in his new book 'The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich' (Scribner, out now).
His subjects range from the booming trade in palatial yachts and doomsday prepping in Silicon Valley, to con-artists like Guo Wengui and the shape-shifting politics of Mark Zuckerberg. But his juiciest reporting reveals how an ostensibly money-losing operation like yachting gels in a parsimonious billionaire's psyche.
'Gigayachts,' he writes, are 'the most expensive objects our species has ever owned — and, as a Silicon Valley CEO put it to me, the best way to 'absorb the most excess capital.'
While a single yacht may cost more than a billionaire's entire real estate portfolio, produce as much greenhouse gas as 1500 passenger cars and depreciate like a ton of lead, not having a permanent address is priceless, he argues.
'Much of the time, superyachts dwell beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement,' Osnos writes. 'They cruise in international waters, and, when they dock, local cops tend to give them a wide berth; the boats often have private security, and their owners may well be friends with the prime minister.'
One use-case: moving art, jewels or other big ticket items duty-free. Another: taking clandestine business meetings.
'One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over,' a yacht captain tells Onsnos, 'and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids have been hosted so well for a week.'
Not only does the yachting class enjoy exotic deliveries — bagels from Zabar's, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido' and flamboyant finishes — eel leather seats, a personal submarine, a mini ski-slope — there are also over-the-top amusements.
In the book, Andrew Grant Super, a cofounder of the 'experiential yachting' firm Berkeley Rand in Londons, discloses a few of the yachting experiences he creates for 'bored billionaires.'
'We can plot half of the Pacific Ocean with coordinates, to map out the Battle of Midway,' Super tells Oscnos. 'We re-create the full-blown battles of the giant ships from America and Japan. The kids have haptic guns and haptic vests. We put the smell of cordite and cannon fire on board, pumping around them… We fly 3-D-printed, architectural freestanding restaurants into the middle of the Maldives, on a sand shelf that can only last another eight hours before it disappears.'
The world's biggest yacht, REV OCEAN is specifically designed to offer that type of boundary pushing adventure. When it's delivered in 2027, it will stretch 639.3 feet — only slightly shorter than Trump Tower — gliding guests to expedition sites in the Arctic Circle, the Galapagos and some of earth's least visited realms in seven-star comfort.
Unlike mere pleasure craft, REV is decked out with a state-of-the-art research command center, where real scientists will polish their PhDs, while CEOs play gentleman explorer. It's the newest plaything for Norway's richest man, billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke.
'It's a bit like an SUV or a four-wheel drive vehicle,' says Beckett, who is exclusively chartering REV OCEAN. 'A lot of people want to go off the beaten track. We have a client at the moment, who is wanting to do something in the Amazon or in Antarctica. He's done, and he will continue to do, St Tropez, Mykonos and St. Barts, but he's looking to give his family some really interesting experiences. And there's a lot of people like that.'
Life on board a top yacht has become so excessive that one owner tells Osnos, 'if you don't have some guilt about it, you're a rat.'
But the venture capitalist yachtsman Bill Duker puts the situation in even more dramatic terms, telling Osnos, 'If the rest of the world learns what it's like to live on a yacht like this, they're gonna bring back the guillotine.'